by a few seconds of heaving and trembling of the earth's crust 

 and by the subsequent fires was something fearful and saddening 

 to look upon. The principal business part of the town had been 

 devastated by fire as well as by earthquake, and in the complete- 

 ness of its ruin was now quite suggestive of an exhumed Pompeii. 

 In the remainder of the city and in the suburban residential areas, 

 about ninety per cent, of the seemingly more substantial buildings 

 had been either destroyed or very seriously damaged by the force 

 of the earthquake shock alone. The number of human lives 

 blotted out by the catastrophe was then and will probably for- 

 ever remain unknown, but the true number is doubtless some- 

 where between one thousand and two thousand. At the time of 

 my return, eight days after the disaster, the streets had been suf- 

 ficiently cleared of debris for the passage of carriages, but remains 

 of human bodies were still occasionally being recovered from the 

 ruins of the buildings. As is usual in cases of earthquake, the 

 wooden houses had suffered the least of any, and as my col- 

 lections made in the Kingston Harbor and vicinity happened to 

 be stored in such a building which the subsequent fire did not 

 reach, I had the fortune of finding all my specimens of algae safe 

 and uninjured. I was also greatly relieved to discover that com- 

 paratively little damage had been done in the Hope Gardens, 

 which are about six miles outside of Kingston, though Superin- 

 tendent Harris's home, in which I had enjoyed the privilege of 



habitable for the time being. In leaving Kingston Harbor for 

 New York on the morning of January 24, it was of much geo- 

 logical interest on passing Port Royal at the harbor's mouth to 

 note the evidences of a considerable subsidence at this point as a 

 result of the earthquake. The former sandy and pebbly beach 

 had disappeared, the water now reaching the sod-covered soil, and 

 a group of cocoanut-palms previously, of course, growing on 

 terra firma, was now partially submerged, their crowns and the 

 upper parts of their trunks appearing above the ocean at a dis- 

 -line (Fig. 14). 



The 



;cured c 



this 



isibly 3,0 



ing 605 c 



